by Bonnie Naradzay
A man detained by the Israeli military in northern Gaza shows injuries on his wrists at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on 24 December 2023 (AFP/Said Khatib)
*
Israeli doctor says detained Palestinians are undergoing ‘routine’ amputations for handcuff injuries. —CNN, April 6, 2024
*
On my listserve, someone posts her fears that the pairs of eclipse glasses she ordered will not arrive in time. A neighbor shares a link from NASA on how to make a pinhole camera. In the news, I read about Palestinians detained outside an Israeli military base. They were given numbers and lost their names. A doctor said the men are chained day and night, blindfolded at all times, hands bound behind their backs, fed through straws. Forced to wear diapers, dehumanized. Bound to a fence for prolonged times, consecutive days. Because of the injuries caused by the shackles, the doctor performs “routine amputations” of their legs. At church this morning, after our group’s discussion of the Sunday readings, a woman talks about how good God is to her family and he knows what’s best for us. How can she say this, I think, remembering Ivan Karamazov, “The Grand Inquisitor.” Why would God permit such suffering in the world? The Israeli Defense Force official replied that every procedure is within the framework of the Law and is done with “extreme care for the human dignity of the detainees.” All day, the wind’s unrest builds and disperses clouds as I try to make sense of such cruelty.
*
Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books this year. She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC. Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems
Spot on!